


Have Our Fire and Laugh

by aderyn



Category: Geography (Anthropomorphic), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Apologies, Episode: s03e01 The Empty Hearse, Explosions, Fire, Homecoming, London Underground, Magic Tricks, Marriage Proposal, Trains, a trigger, fight fire, or a switch, or a tripwire, say it with, with fire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-07
Updated: 2014-01-07
Packaged: 2018-01-07 20:29:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1124052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That’s the thing, though, there is no *off.*</p>
<p>Not with them in the same London.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Have Our Fire and Laugh

**Author's Note:**

> title from Robert Frost, "The Bonfire"
> 
> thanks to [Jude](http://archiveofourown.org/users/wiggleofjudas), for the channel!

_The place it reached to blackened instantly_  
 _The black was all there was by day-light,_  
 _That and the merest curl of cigarette smoke—_  
 _And a flame slender as the hepaticas,_  
 _Blood-root, and violets so soon to be now. –Robert Frost, "The Bonfire"_  
 **  
**

Things have burnt here.

Things have burnt here, gone up, crumbled, _incinerated_ , flashed up again. London, the fireroads remembered. The blaze with its tributaries, feeders, tormentors. ( _You've been tortured, which one of us, thought interruptus; answer: both. All. Things have burnt here, bridges, tunnels, hearts, all._ ) 

Stop. Brakes, oh-- what do the tunnels smell like, hot and gone and still there, hits and wafts of old London (old oil, burnt fish, chips, Baker Street fireplace with them before it.)

Time to come back, Mycroft said; there was smoke on his breath.

*****

His wounds are seared shut.

You again, the skull will say. I thought you were dead.

Bones aren’t indestructible, but it takes a lot.

( _Of heat. John, faithful bloodhound. This what I’m inviting you back to, the heart of the fire. You remember. Of course you do.)_

  
*****

A magic trick is a story, especially one with a flourish.

And time can turn in an eye, the underground in your veins, your stopped pulse, the destruction of everything you love (England,London, John) in a second.

Forgiveness rushes backwards, flashover, through tunnels and time and--

Just stops.

*****

Mind-stations. Trains switching and sparking.

All of London is rue, fireweed, a carpet of blooms bloody and green.

But no… prestidigitation, natural, human,  can bring back—

Well, he went to Baker, waved his hands over the dusty things, not sold, not gone, though oh, was there a fire. There were a lot of them. Something smouldering underground, something, right in the center, beneath the sternum, between.

It’s familiar. His tea tastes like cupric oxide.

Things that in other tunnels, holes, in other countries, lifetimes, he was burnt with.

It’s all right now. All right.

*****

“Blood,” he says aloud, and he means corpuscles, really, but something else appears.

“It’ll never be the same.”

That’s what he heard, anyway, in his head, wasn’t sure whose voice it was, hated what it might be.

“It’ll never be the same. It’s too late. You’ve been an idiot. You’ve been…”

Gone. (that’s a word Mycroft could say, did, with particular emphasis. Gone. Particulates now, only those. Carbon.)

Bruised and bleeding he goes home, John’s ashen face in his eye, ( _you looked like that before, a bomb strapped on, stripped off, light and water close, so long ago, dropped to your knees, but this is well; I didn’t know it would be worse._ ) In the mirror the firemarks of John’s fists. A Marylebone Road darkening round his throat. Water burns going down. Grit in the dry salicylates, a mistake.

Really thought you could wring delight from that, did you, a date, no candle, red paper flower opening in your hand, the reveal—

_I’m back._

Whose voice is that.

Idiot.

His bones, orbital, blacken slow as the night wears, trains pass; London blinks and stutters.

Welcome home dear, my darling.

What grows from the scorched places is tough and fragile, wary.

*****

John’s hair used to smell like pitch, he remembers.

And now, the coat’s singed. John’s face is…

Hot under his gloves.

His hands have second-degree burns, just showing beneath the fine pale cuffs.

Suit is soft as ash.

Skeleton hurts, but he won’t say.

He smokes anyway, down to another finger.

*****

The only thing for it: pull you from the flame and throw you right back into it.

Rise again together.

*****

When London goes up, he goes up too; no, _they_ go up, flintlocks ( _oh, cryptocrystallines_ ) against, well, what do you fight fire with, anyway.  Watch the flames barrelling Westminster to St. James; think, how many times has London exploded, disasters done and averted,Great Fire, 7 July, Liverpool, Aldgate, Tavistock, the bus and traincars melted. He wasn’t there; he was, he was. The burning streets of Tottenham. A carpet of bombs or blooms, genus _sanguinaria_ no doubt.

Blood and fire and a tick, a punchline:

A. John takes his hand.

B. John doesn’t.

C. Either way:

Blackened. Purified. Phoenix from…

What goes up red? Lithium salts and composite hearts. Melted.

There’s an awful lot of light in here—for a tunnel, for a pupil, for a hospital room.

*****

All of his maps are limned with flame, turpines scenting his fingers, fresh and addictive.

Dead. Alive. Alive.

How many times can you rip one another from death and not say, _there is no other._

Though there is.

*****

_This is what I’m inviting you back to, the heart of the fire, a dance with a ghost._

“I still don’t have a heart,” he says. He’s been sorting things to give away.

“Yeah, you’ll be needing that,” John says, stalks off, licks of flame in his pupils.

His heat signature shimmers, or seems to. So close.

Usually he shows up at the aftermath. Usually.  But not today.

What Sherlock means (in everything ) is, _I don’t know how to stop it; I don’t know how to stop it, and I never will._

That’s what happens isn’t it? You die, you’re born; they let you grow up.

(Rushing, rushing cars beneath them, the veins afire.)

They let you grow up, hand you a bomb.

*****

Mind-stations, trains switching and sparking.

Would you not know there was an off switch.

That’s the thing, though, there is no _off._

Not with them in the same London.

*****

He gets down on his knees, only way he knows how. This is how you say it John, with bullets, with explosives, in the dark, with the hot air and the tunnel and the live wire.

Take me back.

Forgive me.

Marry me.

Love me.

*****

John: sleep, dream, remember once you tore cross London, tried to save me.

_(You did.)_

When they walk together in the dark, sparks clicking up off the tracks --

John’s warm shoulder in the dark.

_London_ , he thinks (an oath) _I’m sorry._

_Would it have been enough to save you._

_Our sacrifice._

Which means well; I always have, will, you know; there is no fire like you.


End file.
